'Life: A
True Story'
Man finds unusual way to tell children of Holocaustby Alan Kravitz

Steven V. Gure, a
Holocaust survivor and former New York City police officer, has
found a rather unorthodox way of communicating with his children -- he's written a book about his life.
Life: A True Story chronicles
Gure's life, from his birth into a wealthy Jewish family in
Lithuania to his years as a police officer in the Big Apple.
Gure was 5 when the Nazis took over
Lithuania. He and his older sister survived, but the rest
of the Gure family did not.
"I remember a time when they
(Nazis) placed all the residents of the ghetto in a field.
They wanted to take all the children," Gure said.
"My mother had me in ditch. She covered me up to
protect me. I was laying there for what seemed like
hours. Memories like that stay with you."
But Gure always found it difficult to
talk about those memories with his three children. That's
the main reason for the book. As Gure says in the book's
preface "At this stage of my life, I would like my children
to know me -- or more about me. They might benefit from
it. After all, they stem from me."
When Gure and his sister came to the
United States, they spent most of their time in
orphanages. Gure eventually joined the Army and started a
career as a police officer.
Gure said he never had a previous
desire to be a police officer, but he took the job "to put
bread on my table. The job was available and I took
it."
Gure doesn't know how much bread the
book will put on his table, but that's not a major priority with
him.
"If I make a profit, fine,"
Gure said. "But the main reason I wrote the book was
to communicate with my offspring."
Gure and wife Ruth have three children,
Scott, Michele and Michael. In the book, Gure devotes
several chapters to Scott, who had a troubled youth during the
1970's. In the book, Gure describes the anguish he and
Ruth went through as their son faced a possible jail
sentence. Today, Scott lives in California and works in
the electronics field.
"He's a fine young man," said
Gure of his son.
Scott approves of the book and has read
portions of his father's work, but could not yet read the
sections which were devoted to him, said the Gures.
"It was like opening up an old
wound," Ruth said. "In time, he may re-think
this and say 'Dad, I'd like to have the book back.'"
Gure spent about one year writing the
book. He had no trouble recalling the events he wrote
about in the book.
"The experiences I have had in my
life were so unique that they were very vivid when it came time
to write about them," Gure said.
He does not plan to write any more
books.
"I had one story to tell.
That's it. I never want to experience what I experienced
again in my life," Gure said.
Gure and his wife Ruth moved to Florida
in 1988. The family lives in Coral Springs and Coconut
Creek and Gure, 52, now works as a patrol officer in Highland
Beach.
"I am thrilled to G-d," Gure
said, "to be alive and living well in Florida."